Tag: Luisa A. Igloria

They only want you to think
there isn’t a script: that buildup

from behind-the-scenes confession
to crestfallen admission, to wrath

then tears as cameras twist from face
to eager face in the audience? That’s not

natural outburst— and if for some
unfathomable reason that has become

a credible picture of the soul’s
wilderness, take me away now

and throw away the key. I’d rather be
a monk sentenced to celibacy, confined

to a musty carrel within a library,
assigned to a lifetime of illustrating

page after page: nightshade, monkshood,
bitter oleander, blue cohosh. World

ungraspable except in pieces,
world of unseen danger, unfinished

psalms and lamentations: your dust
powders an edge and for a moment

its parts shine almost like a halo.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Against Nature.

Weathermen scan the skies
for signs of rain, watching
for drifts of heat and cold

that might spin wayward
into twisters, touching down
to flatten silos, trailer

homes, neat rows of brick houses
and their same-color picket fences.
What winds and currents churn

slow then fast in the ocean,
then loft their blue and green
fury above that granite-speckled

mortar? Burnt halo of scorched
hair smell in the air, creosote
spores that bilious clouds

are seeding— Doorjambs, casements
catch; joints swell and ache: we’re
always tensing for what might come.

Some things destroyed and then remade me
in their wake— Tufted, shredded,

combed through, threaded: is it any wonder
these hands do inventory in the stations

of the hours, measuring width and length,
the span of years, the tracks of silverfish

that burrowed deep in pages on the shelf?
The hassock bears the imprint of my heels.

The armchair has memorized the curvature
of my back. It’s hard to sell or give

away the emblems of accumulated life.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Solar Flair.

Broken, a mirror reflects
light that strikes its many
surfaces as well as the unmarred.

Women will gather up the shards,
file their edges smooth and anchor them,
embroidering along the hems of garments

these bits of sun, of tarnished sparkle.
And what of fallen flowers? They might
never be returned to the branch,

yet see how the wind,
the birds conspire to play,
make bids for immortality.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Leaving.

to the hornbill sending its call
along the bluffs, to the wide-eyed
tarsier clinging to the end
of its branch— There, too,
the moon is round as a paper
lantern, the waters dark
blue and seeded with dreams.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Poison Pen.

—the tracks that bodies cut
across the heavens and are mimicked
on this earth: I used to worry

that I couldn’t stop the rush
forward and away; everything
I tried to build, tether,

coax to stay— Helpless
in the pendulum swing
from love to loss

and back again, skies alternating
mild and azure, then lit like wicks
aflame— Cups and bowls

drying on the sink, empty
at the moment, know there is
a shape for every hunger.

 

In response to thus: devour.

Oh I was yours before you
laid eyes on me, my course

predicted by a white wing
adrift: lone vessel voyaging,

voyaging— Sometimes I lose
sight of the latitudes and turn

the rudder wrong ways. No one,
least of all you, will come

to rescue me, though I am
your prodigy. Under the moon

I do my best to persevere,
my brilliant darling—

The stars so bright
on the surface of the well,

your fingers clasped
so beautifully, the way

you lead a body
into the dance.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Fee.

Trying to figure out
the next part of the story,
I do not disregard the dew.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Suchness.

O long-awaited, are you nearly here?
Is that your shadow I see from the window,
beginning to cross the field?

Everywhere I look, there are emblems
from all the years of laboring: nettles
that stung my hands, fronds of palm

braided close to patch the holes
in the roof. Here are shirts
with sleeves of linen to throw

on the shapes of the banished
as they fly under cover of night,
so they too might break free

of their long enchantment. Here
are grains spilled on muddy ground,
where they still shine like pearls

in moonlight: each one now,
accounted for. I read tonight
that certain moths drink the tears

of sleeping birds, turning sorrow
into sustenance. O long awaited,
I have never left, I am still here.

In this lifetime, not the next,
I want to hear the wind speak

a poetry strong enough to bring
all things together that were apart,

a language powerful enough to move stone
gargoyles and brass angels to tears,

to bring a few more dreams
to the dead who’ve lain so patiently

with only the rain or grief
for entertainment. Let us have

no enemies then: let us flash the white
flower of a smile between us, absolve

each other’s debts before the bridge:
fragile, improbably lovely, that

necklace of steps strung
over the abyss.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Skeptic.